Penance
by Krahae
Summary: Oneshot. Her face it may be, but the light behind those eyes is you. You'll give him something she never would. You are a 'Puff after all. Friendship, loyalty means everything. Mind the rating, it's intended.


_Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. The scripting is all me. Sex – and it's not fluff – and violence, and an implied murder. M-Rated at least. Consider yourself warned._

**Penanace**

You wake up, like you always do. Dreams haunt you when you sleep, the same dreams you always have.

Watching him, watching those curse-colored eyes watching you. Knowing that they see right through you, how you live a lie, that your life is a lie.

It's not something you can help. Being what you are is simply that: what you are.

The innocent lie. The loving deception.

Still, despite your dreaming disquiet, you lay still and calm, forcing your heart to slow down, your breathing to even out. The stink of fear is about you but fading. He's still asleep, wrapped up in your tangle of limbs and hair. A supreme effort goes into not clenching your hand around his shoulder and burying your face in his chest, wanting nothing more than to let all the poison in your soul leak out in tears.

He doesn't deserve someone like that. He needs cool, capable strength. It's what he brings this war, and if nothing else, you'll be the rock he leans on when there's no more blood to shed in a day, no more bones to break.

Your back stiffens as his hand reaches up, the one wrapped around behind you that always seems to snake about your shoulders in sleep. Every night you lay beside him, sometimes curling up along his side. Sometimes facing the door of whatever place you've managed to sneak into, or the bedroom of a recent kill. Sometimes he exhausts himself on you first, and the soreness you wake with is like a badge. The hand snaps you back from the fog of your own musing, as it's nails slip along your skin. It traces shapes along the curve of your shoulder that make you shiver, but it's nothing about the cold. "Nightmares?" Husky, still deep with sleep, the words are a physical blow against your heart, making it stutter and leap. He asks you this every time you're caught awake like this. He knows, but there's no way, no easy way to explain.

How could you even begin? Tell him you're sorry that the one woman that could have loved him with an honest heart, could have been his best asset in this bloody war died because a crush gone so very wrong, and it was your fault? Forget what she did, of course... but you knew. And that was reason enough not to tell him any more than he guessed. Secrets, that we all have. He has his, and so you have yours. Oh, he knows that there's more... there's no way he can't. You just can't own up and tell him why you only wear her face, now.

It's your penance. Black hair, black eyes, and a face that haunts your dreams as much as it does his. Sharp. Exotic. Beautiful. Fake.

"No," you answer easily, knowing he doesn't believe it. Sitting up you don't even bother to attempt modesty, as the cold air draws goosebumps across your body, and tightens the skin about your nipples painfully. It doesn't matter: you don't flinch or try to bend away from the cold. You wear this skin like a curse, but you bear it with grace. Or stubborn foolishness. Or madness.

That same madness is shining out of his curse-colored eyes now. It starts a deeper shudder in you, rising from your thighs and ending at your fingertips. He sees you, sees her. You want him to see her. Know it stabs a knife into his heart you never could – how could you? How the bloody hell could you ever hope to affect him? You don't even have a real face for him to dream of, but that's your nightmare, and right now he's pushing it back behind something else. Callouses and the roughness of his hand on your skin make you shiver and the part in your lips lets a hiss of pleasure escape, as those fingers slip along the curve of your spine.

Your eyes roll back, and you arch, knowing well that the motion will set him on fire. Naked, breasts heaving slightly with your shivering breath, hair falling in a curtain over his chest. It's a familiar dance. You're someone else, he wants to live in a memory. You want him, and she's your way in.

It doesn't matter he's fucking the illusion of a dead girl that he barely knew, but it's you he's pinning down with sudden fury and need, hand wrapped up so easy in the fine thread of your hair. A cry snaps out between your lips as his fist slams into the floor behind your head, carrying you with it, and a little warm flower blooms in your stomach.

Yesss... a wicked purr slips around your thoughts. It may be her body he's bruising, but it's you he's hurting, and you both know it's what you need. He's not gentle today, but then you're not planning to be either.

Though you've been sitting in the cold only a moment, the winter is harsh, and it's seeped into your skin easily. The illusion makes you chuckle, despite the small throb in your spine from being pushed down to the floor. Your laugh makes him pause, and something dangerous flares in his eyes. Then he's upon you, pushing at your knees-

Oh god yes-

Heat spears into you, and the cold of your skin feels scalded as he unceremoniously mounts you. There's no love here, just need and pain and fear and a desire for things that can't be touched.

The nightmares get beaten back, beaten deeper as he roughly lifts your hips. You can feel his thighs strain at the angle but there's no remorse in you for it. You whimper in a voice too high, too sweet to be your own-

Silver flares erupt in your vision and suddenly it's the floor your looking at. He's still driving at you, exorcising his demons into your wetness with a fury, as the motions bruise and grind the rough wooden slats against your breasts. Being thrown down like a rag doll only makes it easier for him, as your lust is pouring down your thighs. You wonder idly as he spears into you again, bruising you in dark places, if knowing how much this feeds your lust disgusts him.

There's a devil-may-care smile across your lips when he reaches out and wraps a hand in your hair again, and you know what's next. You arch your back further, tempting him, asking him, begging him to watch how your sex is gripping at him as he tries to drive the unholy light from his soul by filling your willing body with his.

There! Sharp, jarring, he's pulling back hard at your hair. It bends you like a willow, and you know his eyes are on the place where you meet. No longer content to just let him fuck you, you roll your hips and grind the hardness completing you against places he can't even taste on his gentler nights. It rips a scream out of you and there are quakes in your muscles that nearly spill you on the floor but-

_Not. Yet._

It's what he needs, knowing this phantom wants him – accepts him. Even if she was a lie in her own way, you're not – not here. This is you. This is what she could never be, but it's what you are. You'd be his whore, his sister or mother or the stranger he'd fancy in a diner, but he wants her. It's perfect in it's ruin. Love and hate and hurt and comfort all at once. You're everything and nothing and it's beautiful and broken.

You think you love him. You know you love it when he fucks you.

The world shifts, as you drop a knee and collapse, twisting under his assault. The two of you spill but it's controlled, scripted.

Just another turn, dip. _One, two, three, c'mon baby, give it to me..._

Hissing, you spread wide for him, hooking a leg behind his hip. On your side you curl in on yourself, and now you see the pale of his skin, reddened and flushed in lust and gods only know what other passions. A hand strays out, and you can feel his chest, the fluttering thunder of his heart.

You don't need that hand to feel his pulse. It's drumming you closer to madness between your thighs, stretching you apart from the middle and making little noises jump from between your lips like guilty confessions. His hand are busy keeping the tempo, but you know he wants to see you, feel you, and you smile indulgently at his all-consuming hunger.

Fingers trail up along your collar, and he slows a moment, curious as your palm settles, hides the peak of a breast. Then quick and deft, you flick your wrist and the captured, darker rise of your nipple is pulled roughly, the weight of your breast making the sensation connect electrically where he's oh-so-nicely claiming you.

The reward for this little show is punctuated by the sound of his breath hissing out, his spine arching in abject lust. It's a cliff he can't climb back up, and frantic now he drives between your lips, and it's coming, soon now...

_Heat_. The feel of it spilling into you is intoxicating. Firewhiskey burn and ice erupt along your nerves and the black and silver shivers steal your vision...

His weight has turned you, which is fine. His thrusting nearly dislocated a hip and the gentle weight of him between your thighs is like a week's sleeping nights. Reaching up you run a hand through tangled, messy black hair, panting into his ear little words you don't mean and he doesn't believe.

Leaning back, his eyes are... cool. The unholy in them is yours now, and you smile. But then he does the unthinkable-

Lips crash down on yours, and he's holding your eyes... _pressure_. Something warm and languid slaps against your mind and it's making you shiver and flush-

It happens in a blink. Black curtains of hair slip backwards along the spectrum till they tighten and curl slightly, pink and livid. The pressure against his chest where he's crushing your breasts grows tighter, as they adjust back to the size you picked out to catch eyes in Hogwarts. There's a hiss of pain as he becomes huge inside you, while your body shrinks down to the state you were last, when you let the lie fall off. It's a difference of proportion, but still he's deliciously painful now, and you can't help but writhe, uncaring at your pale lavender eyes, the unrealistic fall of hair more suited for cotton candy.

"Tonks," he whispers, leaning down to your ear, and it causes your whole body to spasm. He reacts in kind, and you bless whichever infernal muse it is that watches over his stamina. "Nym," he says, softer, but you don't want softer.

He has _you_, now. Somehow he's pulled you out of hiding, and the fact is his cock is impaling you like a pinned butterfly and he just... won't _stop_-

The tears start, but you shake your head hard, clawing at his shoulders as the world goes black behind closed eyes. It doesn't matter, you're a slip of nerves and want and it's all centered on the way he's owning you.

When he whispers your name, it's a forgiveness.

You don't deserve it – you never will. It's fine though, the lovely boy, _your_ lovely boy, likes you like this, and you won't argue it. It makes him feel better, to unmake you little at a time. If in the end you give him something to live for, something even as tenuous as a warm, willing body in a bed waiting for him once he's won this, then maybe it'd salve your heart as well.

For now though, you'll forgive his trickery at making you someone weak. Someone that may matter to him still. When he wakes back up, black eyes will look back at him.

Her face, but the light behind those eyes is you. You'll give him something she never would.

Maybe if she'd not made him cry, you wouldn't have pushed her off Ravenclaw tower with a faulty broom in her hand. Arrogance always was a Claw's down_fall_.

You are a 'Puff after all. Friendship, loyalty means _everything_.

-

A/N:  
This one fought with me for a week. I didn't know if I wanted it to stand alone, or be a part of something else. Well, a week after it was written. Idea's haunted me for a while. I have this morbid fascination with breaking Tonks, but resist a much as I can. It's fascinating to take someone with so much potential and boil them down to base elements. No. Not telling you if it's Su or Cho, or some other unnamed girl she's decided to wear. That's not important, really.

The concept of dark!Puff intrigues me to no end. Armies can be built on fear, where you only follow for the sake of your life or those of your loved ones. For the right thing, and the idea that people will gravitate to it. For an idea, which can be broken down if argued well enough.

An army built on loyalty, respect and a solid work ethic would be a right frightful thing... don't you think? Anyway. Enjoy a page out of my diary, in HP flavor.


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